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Read My Lips (Sur Mes Levres)

Read My Lips A thriller often is an interesting exercise. How are things arranged and how do they play out? A thriller can be constructed out of many well-worn plots and be reasonably pleasing depending on the skill of the director, the crew and the actors. The smart way to handle a thriller is to combine an interesting plot with some interesting characters. A film should never be just about the events, but the people.
In Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres) Jacques Audiard stylishly presents two unforgettable characters.
Emmanuelle Devos is great as Carla, a woman who is almost deaf and works in an office where she is overworked and ignored. When she is given the opportunity to hire an assistant she chooses Paul (played by Vincent Cassel), who has just been released from prison. They begin a strange friendship and the film constantly keeps you intrigued in figuring out what is going on between them. Is she someone who is plain and not noticed, a femme fatale, a victim, or a seductress? She is all of those things and more.
Far more interesting than the intricacies of the plot are the ways that parts of their personalities and desires are teased out of them. I would think that I understood what was going on, but then things would change. It’s a somewhat twisted, somewhat sweet story about two people whose plain surfaces hide very complex and deep individuals within.
Shot in a distinctive, sensual style with an amazing soundscape, it looks, sounds and feels completely unique, just like the characters. There is a loving attention to detail and a subjective point of view that shows what is going on with an efficiency and style that I loved.
tags: film, review, readmylips

August 30, 2005 dvd, film, readmylips, review

Ghost Dog

I don’t know how to describe the film other than to say that Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a film that Jim Jarmusch in 1999. Like many of the films by Jarmusch, it’s a fascinating mix of well-crafted filmmaking with a diverse range of talents combining together to create something unique. While overall there are some parts that may not completely work, it has a remarkable range from broad comedy to scenes that are surprisingly moving as well.
Ghost Dog is built around the character played by Forrest Whitaker and he holds the entire thing together. He’s a hit man who lives his life according to the Samurai code. All of the characters in the film seem to be slightly out of place in varying degrees. The ice cream man who speaks no English, the mobster who loves hip-hop music, everyone who watches tv seems to watch cartoons, and the little girl who carries around books in her lunch box, and Ghost Dog himself who communicates with his contact via homing pidgeon.
The film is lovingly constructed and like a great song you can get something different out of it every time you experience it. Everything fits together and I watched it twice in one day and saw different things. What does the colour red mean? What do the quotations from Samurai code mean? How does it all fit together? Why does Ghost Dog always set the volume of music to 21? The mixture of styles, characters, tone and technique combine to create something unique that sticks with you as you roll things around in your head.

August 27, 2005 dvd, film, ghostdog, jimjarmusch, review

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

The 1970s were a turbulent time in the U.S. and a lot of interesting films came out of that time. Niels Mueller firmly sets The Assassination of Richard Nixon in the 70s as he shows the transformation and decline of a man who slowly becomes disconnected from reality. Shot in an evocative high-contrast style (by Emmanuel Lubezki) that carefully mirrors the state of mind of Sam Bicke played by Sean Penn. It’s another controlled burn with Penn trying to make sense of his life in an unrewarding job while separated from his wife and children. The world doesn’t make sense and as he watches the news he begins to connect with those who fight the system and who are opposed to Richard Nixon.
The film feels as if it was made in the 1970s (in a good way) and I couldn’t help but think of Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver which also follows the decline of a man who doesn’t fit in. But Sam Bicke isn’t Travis Bickle and while Taxi Driver has a sense of dread from the very beginning and Robert De Niro has a sense of menace, Penn’s Bicke is a person we feel sympathetic as the world doesn’t make sense and he tries to do the right thing. But the routine grinds him down and he only seems to connect with things he sees in the media which helps him form his plan. A dark and precise portrait of a tragic figure.
tags: film, review, theassassinationofrichardnixon

August 25, 2005 dvd, film, review

Touch of Evil

Just because he speaks a little guilty, that don’t make him innocent, you know.

Touch of Evil is a fascinating film in many ways. It was the final film that Orson Welles made in Hollywood, it could be considered one of the last of the classic film noir and I even think it seems like a precursor to the French New Wave. I haven’t seen the version that was released at the time, only the restored version based on a long memo that Welles wrote after seeing the rough cut once. He wasn’t allowed back into the editing room and never saw a version that followed his advice.
Constraints are a fascinating thing. I think that they can produce much better work than having unlimited resources. With Touch of Evil Welles was brought onto the film at first to act, but ended up acting, directing and rewriting the script. With shooting completed in just over a month, the film is constructed out of a series of long takes with the camera following the actors.
Shot largely on location and with much of the film happening at night, it’s a convoluted thriller that shows corruption and revenge in a Mexican border town. Shooting at night enabled all sorts of great shots and lighting and the choreography of the actors is a joy to watch. Many scenes are great examples of how to stage and shoot a scene without needing to cut. The camera moves inside and outside and even into an elevator. Some scenes use a fairly static camera, while others throw things off-kilter and have fluid hand-held shooting.
Sound-wise it’s innovative with music coming from the environment and forming sonic bridges between different scenes. The stripped-down sound matches the contrasty lighting and meticulous framing as well as the characters with shifting alliances and motivations. A great film that is worth watching many times.

August 24, 2005 dvd, film, orsonwelles, review, touchofevil

The Five Obstructions

The Five Obstructions In 1967 Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth made the short film, Det Perfekte Menneske (The Perfect Human), which is a sparse short film that shows people doing things, presented in a slightly abstract sense in black and white. 34 years later Lars von Trier proposes a set of challenges where Leth will remake the film five times and we see it all in The Five Obstructions (De Fem Benspænd.)
While remaking the film with different sets of challenges, it’s really about Leth, von Trier and their filmmaking philosophies. The glue that links the film together are the documentary segments where von Trier lays out the obstructions and Leth listens and writes them down. It’s a great way to see how a filmmaker works and thinks and they respond to the challenges that they face. Von Trier constantly tries to trip up Leth with various challenges and the film surprised me several times. It’s beautifully constructed and moves along quickly as we watch the battle between the two filmmakers, who once were student and teacher. The roles are reversed and there is a degree of perversity that is introduced as we wonder what the point is. They laugh about destroying the original film as they set off on the first obstruction. The various films are different and have varying levels of success, but overall the two oddly distant filmmakers manage to create a film that seems to transcend them both. Filmmaking can be a magical experience and this film is a singular and fascinating look at a game that reveals the players as we examine what a film can mean and how the process can shape the product.
Afterwards I thought about the obstructions and how it was similar to some of the things on “reality” tv. The arbitrary contests and obsessive attention to “the game” and how it is played. But while the obstructions were arbitrary at times, it wasn’t about the obstructions, but about people and the creativity. Both filmmakers are not only trying to battle each other, but to understand their work and themselves. Ironically they seem to understand each other better than they understand themselves. It would be fascinating to see how other filmmakers would battle each other in remaking films, but I suspect that the unique combination and chemistry of von Trier and Leth would be very difficult to achieve.

August 21, 2005 documentary, dvd, film, review

Dear Frankie

Maybe it’s just the films that make it over here, but I’ve loved every film from Scotland that I’ve seen over the last while. The latest one is Dear Frankie, directed by Shona Auerbach, who also was Director of Photography. The film is built around the characters and the wonderful performances that the actors give. The key is in the writing which sets up a dramatic situation that highlights a story about a family dealing with a secret. Emily Mortimer is a mother who hasn’t told her son that she is estranged from his father. She has told him that his father is away at sea and corresponds with her son as his father. But when the ship that she chose is coming in to port and she has to decide what to do.
While the plot moves the characters around, the film lingers on the characters as we watch them struggle with their lives. I loved the look of the film and the pace, which allows us to watch performances and interactions between characters. Mortimer is wonderful and much of her performance is in her face and body language. One of the things that I’ve been enjoying in many recent films is messiness in situations and characters. Things aren’t neat and tidy, but with ambiguity and suggestion. I like it when you get a sense of watching something unfold… it’s a better approximation of reality than so-called “reality” television. Dear Frankie is a great film about unconditional love.
tags: film, review, dearfrankie

August 17, 2005 dvd, film, review

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